Catherine Mitchell, a freshman at UNC-Chapel Hill, checks the list of groceries for a local mother and her two children at the IFC Food Pantry on West Main Street in Carrboro. Photo by Emily Burns

By Emily Burns
Carrboro Commons Staff Writer

Every year, the Inter-Faith Council for Social Services’s Holiday Meals program provides hundreds of disadvantaged families in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area with food and supplies for their own Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

“Food is the issue of the day,” said Kristin Lavergne, community services director for the IFC. “If someone has taken that step to come see us, they are usually really in need.”

During the holiday season, the IFC accepts donations of food and money to provide traditional dishes such as turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, rolls and pies to clients who enroll in the Holiday Meals program.

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The Jade Palace crew is preparing to celebrate the restaurant’s 25th anniversary. Photo by Maciek Krzysztoforski

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

Over the past quarter-century, Jade Palace has developed its standing as a staple in the Carrboro community.

The Chinese restaurant, a favorite among many in this community, will celebrate its 25th anniversary November 9-10.

Jenny Chan and her husband, Francis Chan, opened Jade Palace in 1982.

After moving to Carrboro in 1975, they bought the building at 103 E. Main St. in 1979 and rented the space to an antique shop for several years.

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An unusually heavy fruiting Persimmon Tree in the middle of Chapel Hill. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

A desperate call two weeks ago: “Ken, that persimmon tree near my office is already dropping fruit and I’m leaving for a couple of days and don’t want them to go to waste!” I assured him I would collect those ‘simmons during his absence. We shared mutual curiosity that the ripe persimmons were dropping before the first frosts this year. So, it must be shorter days rather than frigid nights that trigger fruit ripening.

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New center a buzz of activity since opening

Joan Hiskey, center, participates in a strength and mobility class for seniors at the newly opened senior center on Homestead Road. Photo by Isaac Sandlin

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

Over the past few months, county seniors have been quietly settling into their new senior center, which has quickly become a hot spot for the area’s older population.

The Robert and Pearl Seymour Center for Seniors has been open since May, and while it still has that new-car smell, it’s already a second home for its regular visitors.

On a recent Thursday morning, the center is scattered with people. A group of older men sit near the entrance watching the activities around them, rehashing the week’s happenings. One is wearing UNC attire head-to-toe, while another dons suspenders and a fedora.

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A variety of plants — from flowering annuals and perennials to kitchen herbs, tomatoes, peppers and even a few stalks of corn — are easily grown on a sunny deck or patio. Photo by Ken Moore 

By Ken Moore 

Fall is for planting, a time when one can get a spade into the soil and we have ample rainfall. Not this year. While we home gardeners lament our situation, let’s all pray to whatever spirits we honor for our local farmers who are hard pressed to begin those fall crops we so take for granted every September through December at our Carrboro Farmers’ Market.

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(Editor’s note:  During fall gardening season we’ll be providing tips from the experts. This week’s tips come from Richard Quinn of Fifth Season in Carrboro.)

• Tip 1: Find a way to collect rainwater. “Even though it’s not raining right now, it will eventually.” Rain barrels are a good way to collect and use rainwater to preserve water, and because rainwater is free of metals found in tapwater, it is healthier for plants.
• Tip 2: Set up a drip irrigation system. “It’s not that expensive, it can be done with basic tubing.” By stretching the watering over a longer period of time and in smaller quantities, plants absorb more water and less is wasted.   More »

Rosinweed (Silphium compositum)

By Johnny Randall
North Carolina Botanical Garden

Natural plant distribution and abundance are largely dictated by the climatic extremes rather than by averages. Our current extreme and killing drought will likely cause a habitat shift in many areas: The plants that can tolerate the drought will remain and possibly expand their territories and those that can’t will perish and find themselves restricted to the more mesic (moist) sites.

Extreme drought is not beyond the genetic memory of many of our native plants, whose ancestors made it through equally harsh times. Within the more recent Piedmont geologic history, during the Hypsithermal period (between 2,000 and 4,000 years ago), prolonged drought and high temperatures caused an expansion of prairie and a contraction of forests across North America. Piedmont North Carolina still houses refugees from this period in specialized habitats and on roadsides, power-line clearings and other managed rights-of-way. These mostly shade-intolerant herbaceous roadside attractions are coming into their own here at the end of summer and are particularly prevalent in the county. But keep your eyes on the road! These plants are also adapted to fire and buffalo grazing, but that’s another story…

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Simeon Holloway introduces members of the B-1 Navy Band during a ceremony honoring the group at the Franklin Street Post Office.  Photo by Kirk Ross

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

They stood on the steps of the Franklin Street Post Office and received a key to the Town of Chapel Hill. Later, they filed into the building that served as their barracks some 65 years ago and had praises heaped upon them by a grateful community.

The reception given the B-1 Navy Band — know affectionately in town as the Navy Preflight Band — was vastly different than their first march through the streets of Chapel Hill, when they were met with jeers, insults and, reportedly, handfuls of flying mud as well.

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By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

As if you needed further proof, witness firsthand this Saturday.

But of course you already knew. You knew that an absolutely essential ingredient in the very finest dishes from all our favorite chefs is that locally grown goodness – such as is found nowhere in greater abundance than at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market. Come, then, for the food, this Saturday morning, September 8, to the sixth-annual Chefs Who Shop the Carrboro Farmers’ Market event. Six chefs who regularly stock their kitchens with all the market has to offer will be on hand creating Southern fare-inspired dishes using ingredients presently available from market vendors.

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Closeup of Bidens flower head showing central tiny disc flowers surrounded by ray flowers hosting a crab spider with captured prey. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

One plant
To me, Labor Day means the flowering of Bidens aristosa and Bidens polylepis. Don’t worry about which is which. Their golden-yellow, daisy-like flowers are so similar that I leave it to the younger botanists to devote long hours to sorting them. It’s enough for me to know that the former occurs in the coastal plain and the later occurs in the mountains and both commonly overlap in our piedmont.

The Latin name, Bidens, means two teeth; it’s descriptive of two tooth-like projections on top of the flattened seed of some species. You will recognize and cuss the seed of the very common Spanish Needles, Bidens bipinnata, with three and four long needle-like teeth that grab your clothes by the hundreds during fall walks. Spanish Needles don’t have showy flowers like the first two species mentioned above. The showy-flowered Bidens go by numerous common names: Bur Marigold, Tickseed, Ditch Daisy, Ozark Tickseed Sunflower, and the list goes on. You take your pick. Go ahead, make up your own name and you’re more likely to remember it.

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Maine Island deck-level Sumac. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore 

I was not looking forward to the long drive to visit cousins in New England, but the tediousness and hazards of highway travels can be pleasantly calmed by viewing roadside vegetation along the way.

Like any wild botanist, I’m most content when identifying plants at 60-plus miles per hour. That’s why my wife prefers to drive. That’s fine with me, and she remains much calmer.

Along the way we enjoyed many patches of sumac. In some states, mowing crews had left the patches; sadly, in others, similar patches had been mowed or killed by herbicide application.

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By Jack Carley
Staff Writer

Scott Conary knows coffee. He knows it well enough to be head judge for the World Barista Competition in Tokyo – which is like the Olympics, only more aromatic.

The co-owner of the Open Eye Cafe knows it well enough to teach to even the people who actually grow coffee what it takes to make a good cup. And for 16 days in Honduras, that’s what he did.

Conary was flown to the Honduran mainland in late June. A grant from USAID, organized by Winrock International, a non-profit working toward economic development, covered the flight and rooming expenses.

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Common Tall Goldenrod at Mason Farm Biological Reserve. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

Goldenrods – particularly the Pineywoods Goldenrod, Solidago pinetorum, a welcome sign of approaching fall – have begun coloring up the roadsides in spite of the drought. It was one of the first plants carried over to England, where it quickly became a standard flower of the famed perennial border and the English cottage garden. Some fine goldenrod cultivars have been produced by keen English gardeners and I remember walking into the Great Autumn Flower Show of the Royal Horticultural Society at Vincent Square in London in 1981 to see a magnificent tub of the tall, common goldenrod high up on the center display. Some folks may still consider goldenrod to cause hay fever. I may feature ragweed, the true hay fever plant, later on, but for now, trust me, you won’t get hay fever from sniffing goldenrod. You may get a bee or some other flying insect up your nose – for those colorful critters, not the wind, are necessary for transporting all that pollen from plant to plant!

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Training for the big one: Chapel Hill Transit driver Mike Schuster takes a training ride on the system’s new articulated buses. The new buses are 20 feet longer than the system’s regular rides and bend around curves. Photo by Isaac Sandlin

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

There are a lot of things that mark the end of summer — Labor Day, putting away your white bucks, cheaper hotel rooms at the beach.

But around here, the end of summer, or at least the vacation part of it, is punctuated by an exponential increase in the drone of bus engines as they haul students and employees by the thousands to the heart of campus.

The university kicks back into gear next week with classes starting on Wednesday, and the bus system changes from a light summer schedule to the academic year’s full-throttle mission on the Monday prior.

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Common Milkweed standing tall in Arcadia Community. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

An early-morning walk through the Chapel Hill Merritt Pasture near the James Taylor Bridge is a real pleasure. The wild part is gaining access to the rolling pasture site. You are well advised to plan your visit during the Sunday morning hours. There is a little parking available along the bikeway at the intersection of Culbreth Road and Highway 15-501. It’s a challenging intersection to negotiate on foot, even with the traffic light, and though Sunday morning is light, please remain constantly alert to the speeding vehicles until you have safely made it to the pasture. Eventually the town will have the planned parking and pedestrian safety measures in place so that access to Merritt Pasture will not be such a wild experience.
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